Google is currently planning to make their algorithm changes a real time affair. While in the past the algorithm updates launched by Google has been a source of worry for some and joy for the others, now with the possibility of real time algorithm updates, it is probably going to become more challenging for SEO specialists to come up with effective strategies that are going to present them with sustainable ranking results. So let’s look at some of the critical issues that SEO professionals might face with the introduction of real time algorithm changes.
Algorithmic Penalties Versus Manual Actions
Unlike manual actions that allow SEO professionals to troubleshoot an issue as and when it occurs, algorithmic penalties are much more difficult to handle by nature. When it comes to a standard manual action, a site owner is informed about the penalty applied through Google Search Console, thereby allowing the webmasters to remove the issues that are impacting their sites negatively. However, with algorithmic penalties, they will hardly even realize that there is a problem that needs to be sorted out. The best way to see if a website has been impacted with an algorithmic penalty would be to match the dates of traffic downfall with known dates of algorithm updates.
Issues of Misdiagnosis and Discrepancies
Another major problem that can crop up due to real time algorithm updates is the confusion and discrepancy caused by the difference between data that is collected by the web crawlers and the actual state of the websites and their links. The web crawlers used by Google hardly ever crawls all the pages with the same frequency. Once certain changes are applied to a website or a fresh number of backlinks are added to it, it can take many weeks or even months for that site to be properly crawled and the penalties, if applicable, to be applied. This means that even if site owners maintain a detailed track record of the changes they make, their data may not match with the time of the penalties themselves. This can automatically lead to misdiagnosis of penalties.
Apart from the issues discussed above, there is also going to be increased instances of negative SEO and black hat SEO practices that accompany the implementation of real time algorithm changes. However, one can also expect that with such updates the sites in future will be able to recover quickly from possible SEO issues and the SERPs will offer better results in the coming years.
